Bonnie Jo Campbell wastes no time getting "Once Upon a River" going. In the novel's opening chapter, Margo Crane, who at first suggests descent from Mattie Ross of Charles Portis' "True Grit," endures the death of a beloved grandparent, abandonment by an indifferent parent and molestation by still another relative. She also hones her uncanny ability with firearms, which comes in handy later.

After a year spent "forming her objection" to the mistreatment she suffered, Margo seeks revenge, only to discover it can have unwanted fatal consequences. When Margo embarks on her life of strenuous independence, "Once Upon a River" becomes an episodic travel story featuring a protagonist lacking an inner life or curiosity extending beyond "the qualities of different types of firewood."

Campbell earned attention and a contract with a major publisher when her previous book, "American Salvage," a collection of short stories first issued by a university press, became a surprise finalist for the National Book Award. Like much of her earlier work, "Once Upon a River" takes place mostly in rural Michigan and centers on people who could be considered anachronisms. Indeed, one character explicitly calls Margo a throwback. A teenager never happier than when hunting, skinning animals, chopping wood or swimming in or rowing on a river, Margo embodies self-reliant girl power -- except, that is, when depending on generous strangers for money or shelter, which they conveniently provide precisely when she needs it.

She models herself on the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and Campbell repeatedly stresses their similarity, despite setting her tale in the late 1970s and early 1980s, more than half a century after the star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show died. A children's book about Oakley and a stolen rifle are among the few items Margo takes when she heads out on her own.

A high school dropout, Margo doesn't recognize the name Odysseus when someone mentions it, but like him she searches for home. Unlike Homer's hero, she doesn't return to where she once resided. Instead, her quest is to figure out how to live on her own terms. Along the way, she meets characters who roughly correspond to some from the "Odyssey," including a Cyclops (a partially blind brute) and a lotus-eater (her lazy mother, who wants no more than a life of ease). Most of Campbell's characters lack variety, however. Her men are usually prone to drunkenness and cruelty, and those who aren't tend to be physically weak or infirm. Some, like the one identified only as "the Indian," verge on stereotypes.

In further contrast to Odysseus, Margo has adventures marked by sameness instead of variety. Essentially similar events recur throughout the novel, sapping it of initial narrative momentum. These include occurrences both major (rapes, shooting deaths, flights from a clinic visited in connection with the unintended result of an interlude with "the Indian") and comparatively trivial (appropriating someone else's dog, performing tricks with rifles in order to secure favors). Campbell could have called the novel "Twice upon a River."